Tuesday Links

I think, from now on, if I don't have any specific link/video/comic I want to show you, I'll do something more along the lines of the Paris Reviews blog, and briefly synopsize some interesting links.

While I think it overstates it's case in a couple places, The Guardian's look at the social and historical background for Frank Herbert's Dune is worth checking out.  "[The Fremen] are the moral centre of the book, not an ignorant mass to be civilised. Paul does not transform them in his image, but participates in their culture and is himself transformed into the prophet Muad’Dib."

The film adaptation of David Lipsky's Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself hits theaters on July 31st.  The movie is called The End of the Tour and you can watch the trailer here.  It stars Jesse Eisenberg as David Lipsky, and Jason Segel as David Foster Wallace.  While the film has been getting good reviews, the Vulture has an good article about what this means for how we think of Wallace now.  "But before his suicide he compared his own fame only to that of a high-profile classical musician. It’s just since the Kenyon speech became the sort of chain email your dotty uncle forwards you that Wallace has been transformed into an idol of quasi-moral veneration, the bard of ironic self-loathing transformed into a beacon of earnest self-help. "

Not exactly lit-related, but The Paris Review has a brief travel/photo essay on the opening of Cuba to American tourists.

Winston Rowntree's Subnormality is probably the best webcomic around.  If you go through the archives, it takes a while for him to find his voice, but it's worth it.  If you want to read a stand-alone post, try Message 652.

And finally, in the realm of self-promotion, I have a poem published in the Paper Plane Pilots 4th Issue of their in-flight magazine.

Voices from Beyond

It's always interesting to find how things we've taken for granted were understood upon their inception.  Over the course of this blog, I've included video of Truman Capote, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Conan Doyle and others who were speaking from the other side.  Today, this would seem rather commonplace, but how were the first cases of such a post-mortem lectures received?  Well, the Paris Review is here to tell us.

It includes an unfortunately grainy recording of Robert Browning on an Edison Talking machine from less than a year before his death in 1889.


 A year later, on the first anniversary of his death, the cylinder was played.  According to the London Times report on the event:

"Today was the anniversary or Robert Browning's death...in singular commemoration of it, an event unique in the history of science and of strange sympathetic significance took place at the Edison house.  The voice of the dead man was heard speaking.  This is the first time that Robert Browning's or any other voice has been heard from beyond the grave."

The first, but far from the last.  Of course voice recording soon picked up.  Although, the Edison talking doll couldn't have helped matters much.  What follows is the real recording of the Edison Talking Doll and holy shit is it horrifying.